4 Comments

1. GrueBleen

   July 11, 2015

   Kind of irrelevant in a low posting rate blog like Club Troppo don't you think ?

   Seriously, just how tiresome and difficult is it to hit Page Down a couple of times to get to the next/previous post if you're not interested in reading the one that's currently on screen ?

   Otherwise, why not go for the 'scientific paper' approach and make everybody write a short abstract and then have everything else 'below the fold'. Would that be a worthwhile effort, do you think ?

2. derrida derider

   July 11, 2015

   You don't need a true abstract, but it is good practice to tell the story in the first para - exactly as dead tree journos have been taught for centuries now. Of course Troppo posters generally do that (they write well here).

3. GrueBleen

   July 12, 2015

   Yes, fair point, and one that I did have in mind. The situation, as I understand it, is that in MSM dead tree journalism, the numbers who read a given paragraph show exponential decay with only a relatively minor number actually reading through to the last paragraph.

   So I suppose the question is: what is the writer's intent ? To convey everything important in the first three paragraphs so that the majority of readers who stop there still get all the important stuff.

   Or, to provide the reader with sufficient motivation to continue for at least a few paragraphs more, and maybe even all the way to the end.

   I read the most recent post (about Labor not winning the next election because "small target' Shortenin') and I thought it was trying for option 2 above, but didn't quite make it (if Bill Shorten has to become Gough Whitlam to win, then Labor can forget it).

   So I dunno, DD, ideally you might be right, but I'm not sure it's really working.

4. GrueBleen

   July 15, 2015

   So, I guess we can now estimate the level of general interest in this topic. So it goes.